Los Angeles Angels: What’s on their post-lockout to-do list
Year in and year out, the Los Angeles Angels have one of the more attractive baseball teams on paper. The problem is, the star-power in their lineup and pitching staff have not met expectations.
Coming off of their sixth consecutive season with a below .500 record, the Angels are once again taking an aggressive approach to the offseason and spending money. With two of the very best players in baseball in Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani on the big league roster, every year under .500 and not in the postseason is a year wasted of their respective primes.
With Albert Pujols, Alex Cobb, Dexter Fowler and Dylan Bundy off the books, the Los Angeles Angels have money to spend.
So far in the 2021-22 offseason, the Angels front office has been busy, acquiring utilitymen Tyler Wade and Andrew Velazquez, signing starting pitchers Noah Syndergaard and Michael Lorenzen, re-signing Raisel Iglesias and bringing shutdown left-hander Aaron Loup aboard as well. Syndergaard and Lorenzen are of note here because the Angels have always seemed to lack one huge piece to their puzzle, and that is quality starting pitching.
While the early moves made by Perry Minasian and company are certainly encouraging, there is still more work to be done to shore up the big league roster and finally make a run at a deep postseason run.
Let’s take a look at a few items that should be on the Angels’ to-do list once the Major League Baseball lockout is lifted.
The Los Angeles Angels need to upgrade at shortstop
FanGraphs’ Roster Resource has Tyler Wade projected to be the club’s starting shortstop in the upcoming campaign, splitting time with Jack Mayfield. Simply put, if the Angels are looking to contend as soon as possible, this cannot be the configuration they go with at short.
Free agent shortstop Trevor Story is still out there. If Perry Minasian is serious about spending the money necessary to put together a contender, he should seriously consider bringing Story aboard. In 2021, the Angels had Jose Iglesias penciled in as the starter over the course of the season and, while the club could look to bring him back at a cheaper rate than Story, Iglesias just doesn’t bring the thump and star-power that Story does.
You don’t need me to tell you about Trevor Story as a ballplayer. In his six-year career as a member of the Colorado Rockies, he hit 158 home runs across 745 games, hit .272 with a career .340 OBP, .523 SLG%, and a .523 OPS. Story has a career OPS+ and wRC+ of 112 and a .336 BABIP as well. Now, his game is not only offensive. He has a career 10.6 dWAR, good for 15th amongst all active players and fifth amongst active shortstops, behind defensive stalwarts Andrelton Simmons, Brandon Crawford, Nick Ahmed, and Carlos Correa.
The one argument against signing somebody like Trevor Story, is the dreaded “Coors Effect” on his offensive stat-line. The Coors Effect is best defined as the uptick in player’s offensive performance while playing in Colorado and having Coors Field be his home field over the course a full season. Batted balls tend to carry farther in Colorado due to the altitude and pitches end up having different/lessened movement, making them easier to hit.
In 375 games at home in his career, Trevor Story hit 95 home runs and drove in 279 with a batting average of .303 and a .369 OBP, .603 SLG%, and .972 OPS across just under 1,600 at-bats. In 370 games on the road, Story hit 63 home runs and drove in 171, a batting average of .241 with a .310 OBP, .442 SLG%, and .752 OPS across 1,544 at-bats. There is no denying the fact that that is somewhat alarming.
While it’s hard to argue against the Coors Effect, Trevor Story offers more value than it may look like. Not only is he currently in the 89th percentile in sprint speed, making him a serious threat on the bases, but he has borderline-elite defensive talent and hits the ball harder than anyone. While playing in Colorado undoubtedly helped him lift the ball more, there are more than enough reasons to believe that his home/road splits will normalize in a non-Coors environment on a full-time basis.
The Los Angeles Angels should be patient with two of their top outfield prospects
While this is not necessarily a transactional move as most of these “to-do list” items are, it is still an important point worth mentioning. The Angels need to be patient with youngsters Brandon Marsh and Jo Adell.
Starting with Adell, the 22-year-old appeared in around 30 games and gathered about 130~ plate appearances in both 2020 and 2021. He struggled mightily in 2020 but saw some slight improvements in his game last season. Starting last season in the minor leagues helped the young Adell get additional reps that he desperately needed and after a solid showing in Triple-A (highlighted by 23 home runs in just 73 games), the Angels brought him back up. While strikeouts are a serious issue for Adell, his batting average, OBP, SLG%, and OPS all improved in 2021 as well as a 97 wRC+ against the wRC+ of just 27 he put up in 2020.
On defense, Adell has extensive experience at all three outfield spots but the Angels have used him mostly as a corner outfield option since his debut. Right field is his likely home moving forward in his big league career.
Steamer projections on FanGraphs have Adell taking a significant step forward in 2022, hitting 21 home runs over 126 games and 500+ plate appearances, carrying similar batting-line numbers over from 2021. He’s projected for a 97 wRC+ and a total of 0.8 WAR. No, this is not a superstar-level performance, but it is certainly an improvement that Angels ownership and fans are no doubt going to be pleased with.
Brandon Marsh, another uber-prospect (albeit not quite on the same level as Adell), made his debut last season for the Halos, appearing in 70 games and hitting two home runs and a .254/.317/.356 slash line in 260 plate appearances. His home run power has never been noteworthy, Marsh has great speed on the basepaths and is much more of a high-batting-average top of the lineup player than Adell.
Steamer projections on FanGraphs have Marsh playing in 120 games in 2022, with 11 home runs and a 91 wRC+, while carrying similar AVG, OBP, SLG%, and OPS numbers than the ones he had in 2021 during the regular season. Marsh is projected to be worth 1.4 WAR and — most notably — is projected to raise his walk-rate to 8.8% (still in the bottom half of the league) while also lowering his ghastly 35% strikeout rate in 2021 to a somewhat more respectable 29% in 2022.
Jo Adell and Brandon Marsh are two of the most prized prospects that Angels fans have been waiting on for years. They both have already made their Major League debuts, but with mostly poor results. The Angels need to do what they can to stay patient with the two of them while they develop at the big league level and see what happens when they’re able to make adjustments and learn on the fly.
If these two can perform the way they’re expected to, they could pair with Mike Trout and form one of the most terrifying outfields in the game, now and maybe all-time.
The Angels should look to sign (at least) one more starting pitcher
The Angels always seem to be lacking pitching. Mike Trout, Shohei Ohtani (the DH version), Josh Hamilton, Albert Pujols, and Mark Trumbo are just a few names they’ve had on the offensive side of the ball over the past 10 years or so. They have never quite had the staff to make it deep into October.
That is exactly why they should look to bring in (at least) one more starting pitcher, and who better than one of baseball’s most improved arms of 2021, Carlos Rodón?
A first-time All-Star with his first career no-hitter under his belt as well, Carlos Rodón improved all across the board in 2021. Each year from 2015 to 2019, Rodón showed glimpses of stardom but could not translate that into any sort of recognition as one of the better lefties in the game. A Tommy John surgery in 2019 led him to miss the rest of that season and most of 2020. When he returned to the mound in 2020, he looked awful, pitching in just 7.2 innings across four starts, putting up an 8.22 ERA and just six strikeouts, ultimately giving up more earned runs than strikeouts.
At the conclusion of the 2020 season, the Chicago White Sox elected to non-tender the struggling southpaw, a surprise given his slowly improving track record but not a huge shock given his recent injury problems and poor performances. Just under two months later, right before the start of Spring Training, the White Sox re-signed Rodón to a one-year, $3 million contract and then just four months after that, he’s throwing a seven strikeout, no-hit performance against Cleveland.
Carlos Rodón’s newfound ace status has been credited to first-year pitching coach Ethan Katz, who helped Rodón fix his mechanics coming off of Tommy John surgery. Here is a little bit of the behind the scenes of it all thanks to Michael Baumann of The Ringer.
“When I knew I was going to sign back with the Sox, Ethan and I jumped on the phone,” Rodón says. “We talked about certain adjustments I needed to make, and he said the first part would be the lower half. That was the main focus.” “The first time we talked on the phone, he was pretty much all ears,” Katz said. “So I just threw him all the information that I thought could help him, and obviously he put in the work.” The key, Katz says, was changing how Rodón pushed off the rubber. Before, he’d been driving with just his toe, which was sending him toward first base and setting into motion all the mechanical messiness that had plagued him over the previous few years. Katz’s goal was to get Rodón to drive more off his back leg and use his entire foot to explode off the rubber. “When you keep a better direct path toward home plate, that also keeps him healthier instead of battling across himself all the time,” Katz says.
All of the changes Rodón and Katz were able to make clearly worked wonders for the lefty. He wrapped up 2021 with 5.0 WAR per Baseball-Reference and was ultimately the proud owner of a 13-5 record, 2.37 ERA, and a career-high 12.6 SO/9 rate and a career low 2.4 BB/9 rate (185 strikeouts against 36 walks in just 132.2 innings). With essentially every number on his pitching line is a new career high for the big southpaw, 2021 was a successful year for him in all meanings of the word.
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The Los Angeles Angels have already added Noah Syndergaard and Michael Lorenzen to their starting rotation, but there is a clear need for at least one more and Carlos Rodón would be the perfect fit for an Angels club eyeing contention.